It is well known to those skilled in the art that aromatic hydrocarbons are a class of very important industrial chemicals which find a variety of uses in petrochemical industry. Recent efforts to convert gasoline to more valuable petrochemical products have therefore focused on the aromatization of gasoline to aromatic hydrocarbons by catalytic cracking in the presence of a catalyst. The aromatic hydrocarbons produced by the aromatization process include C.sub.6 to C.sub.8 hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene and xylenes (hereinafter collectively referred to as BTX) which can be useful feedstocks for producing various organic compounds and polymers. However, heavier, less useful aromatic compounds are also produced during the aromatization process. It is, therefore, highly desirable to convert these compounds to the more useful BTX.
Though a metal oxide-promoted alumina such as Cr/Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 has been used as catalyst in a hydrodealkylation process, the conversion of a C.sub.9 + aromatic compound and the selectivity to BTX are generally not as high as one skilled in the art would desire. One possibility for the low selectivity is that the metal oxide is not uniformly dispersed on the alumina support thereby limiting the total surface area of the catalyst. Therefore, there is an ever-increasing need to develop an improved catalyst and a process for converting these heavier and less useful aromatic compounds to the more valuable BTX hydrocarbons (hereinafter referred to as hydrodealkylation process). Such development would also be a significant contribution to the art and to the economy.